M100 and NGC 6951: Morphological Clues to Central Dynamics

High-resolution optical and NIR observations are used to constrain a dynamical model of the circumnuclear star forming (SF) region in the barred galaxy M100 (NGC 4321). Small leading arms observed in our K-band image of the nuclear region have been reproduced in numerical modeling of M100, a galaxy with a double inner Lindblad resonance (ILR). We also present preliminary optical and NIR observations of NGC 6951: a barred galaxy with circumnuclear SF showing a distinctly different behavior to M100 at 2.2um.